The fruitless blame game

Every time there is a mass shooting (outside of inner-city hellholes like Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and St. Louis) the National Rifle Association and the AR-15 become top booger bears of the anti-gun politicians, mainstream media and their mindless zombie followers.

It’s both ignorant and counterproductive – which is precisely what the establishment wants. It pits people against people and sends them into pointless back-and-forth, tit-for-tat arguments that accomplish nothing but to ruffle feathers, damage friendships and keep the people distracted while they take away your liberties. When all the arguing is done, nothing is settled. Those who like guns and believe they are essential to freedom still do. Those who fear/hate guns, worship the state and would trust it to have a monopoly on violence still do.

The truth is, almost all politicians favor gun control. Deep down, most all of them want all uncontrolled arms of the people confiscated.

Why do all governments want to confiscate arms of their people? It is quite simple. The government political system fears an armed citizenry. Organized crime, no matter how legitimate it may appear, wants no risk of being overthrown and no personal risk to the politicians and bureaucrats. It wants no threat to the state that it cannot calculate and control.

The state is therefore the enemy of the people. Otherwise it would not fear the people and want to disarm them. We can clearly understand disarmament because we recognize that the state and its bureaucrats and politicians are on one side and the people are on the other.

The frivolous debate of public safety against crime and criminals is laughable, except media hype actually persuades more and more people of this pacifistic nonsense.

The bold and insane issue of gun control is that the cause of gun violence is guns. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is creating violence with weapons of death all over the world.

The strategy of public persuasion with propaganda is far less risky to the state than physical force. Although, keep in mind that propaganda is force and leads as certain to conclusions in favor of the government.

The NRA is not a monolithic monster that controls politicians through mind control or money. It’s not even in the top 50 in lobbying organizations.

The NRA is people. It’s lobbying is no different than AARP’s. The NRA’s power comes from the people it represents — which means votes. On the local and state level (in the House and Senate elections) – that’s important. It’s also why gun control comes about gradually — like President Donald Trump’s (self-described as strong on gun rights) is now instructing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to ban bumpstocks (which the Barack Obama BATF did not do) and calling for “stronger background checks.” The people just sit back and accept this affront because Trump is not Obama.

Apparently Trump was correct when he said his supporters were so loyal “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

When an anti-gunner blames the NRA for violence, makes statements that the NRA has blood on its hands and graffitis billboards with the words, “Kill the NRA,” what they are doing is personally attacking and blaming millions of law-abiding Americans for the crimes of deranged criminals. It’s specious nonsense, but great fodder for the politicians and MSM.

The NRA gives voice to millions of people who believe not only that they have a right to defend themselves and own the proper, most advanced tools available to them to do that, but they believe that every law that hinders that is a violation of their rights guaranteed under the Constitution – a Constitution designed to restrain government, not grant rights.

The NRA hasn’t killed anyone. NRA members don’t participate in mass murders. One of the primary purposes of the NRA is providing training and certifying trainers to ensure the safe handling of firearms. Blaming the NRA for mass shootings is akin to blaming the Automobile Manufacturer’s Association for the Manhattan truck attack and drunk driving.

And claiming that the NRA will not compromise on gun rights is ahistorical ignorance. The NRA has often compromised surrendered on gun legislation (which is one of several reasons I do not belong to it).

Nor is the AR-15 — or other so-called “assault rifles” (which is a specious and amorphous term that means nothing) – a Frankenstein wandering about school campuses and public venues seeking large groups to slaughter.

According to FBI statistics firearms are used to murder about 10,000 people per year on average. Of those, rifles of all types are used to kill about 300 people. Both of those figures rose in 2015 and 2016, reversing a decades-long trend of declining homicide rates.

Sporting rifles like the AR-15 is a subset of rifles, and not even the biggest subset, despite propaganda to the contrary. Estimates are that there are more than 80 million sporting rifles in circulation, yet they are used in only a handful of crimes.

That means that more than 80 million sporting rifles have not been and never will be used in a crime. The idea that banning them will “reduce crime” is pie-in-the-sky foolishness.

The truth is, despite all the anti-gun hysteria fabricated by the left, far more people understand this and support gun rights than support more gun laws.

Anti-gun politicians know this. That’s why they never broach the subject of amending the Constitution to outlaw guns: the only method by which guns can legally be banned in the U.S. Such an amendment would be dead on arrival.

I wrote the following for my readers of The Bob Livingston Letter (subscription required) in the December 1999 issue. It’s just as relevant today, if not more so:

Before the final act of turning in your guns as has just happened in Canada and Australia, there appears every conceivable ruse of entrapment to make sure that the government can identify every gun owner and every pro-gun sympathizer.

One point in this regard is that the airing (of a documentary) of the Canadian and Australian situation was coupled with a National Rifle Association (NRA) appeal for a quick additional 3 million new members under the leadership of film star and pseudo-patriot Charlton Heston.

Affixing your name and identity to the NRA is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Anyone naïve enough to believe that the NRA membership list won’t end up with gun confiscation authorities is too naïve to own a gun.

Gun confiscation is not child’s play. It has to do with the basic survival of human liberty. Americans should protect their private guns and keep their guns private. This is the first law of survival against the organized crime of the state.

Gun confiscation can be speeded up. All the government needs for an excuse is a massacre. Then there will be overwhelming propaganda in the form of public outrage for the immediate outlawing of all guns owned by individuals. Yes, a lot of well-meaning dupes will join government media hype for gun control. Guns do not cause violence. What happens to our safety when all guns are in the hands of power hungry goons? They will plunder and kill under any pretext and without any pretext at all.

Rent the 1998 movie “Enemy of the State,” starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman.

Alas, the wimps who go along with gun control propaganda will discover to their horror that they are the enemy of the state. Mind control is awesome power.

To understand the power of anti-gun propaganda and the vacuity of the anti-gunner’s argument one need only understand this: The very people who believe with all their hearts that Trump is a tyrant and a dictator want the people disarmed so that only the government has guns.